is
extensive private park or gardens, which were situated across the
Tiber on the ground now approximately occupied by St. Peter's and the
Vatican. When he appeared at the Olympic games driving a team of ten
horses, he was thrown out of the car, and had to be lifted into it
again. Though he was eventually compelled to abandon the race, he was,
of course, crowned victor all the same. He dabbled also in painting
and modelling.

We must not dwell too long upon his eccentricities. One might describe
how in his earlier years he often put on mufti and roamed the streets
at night with a few choice Mohawks, broke into shops, and insulted
respectable citizens, throwing them into the drains if they resisted;
how, being unrecognized, he once received a sound thrashing from a
person of the senatorial order, and was thereafter attended on such
occasions by police following at a distance. One might describe his
dicing at L3 or L4 a pip, or his banquets, at one of which he paid as
much as L30,000 for roses from Alexandria. After the great
conflagration which swept over a large part of Rome in this very year
64 he began to build his enormous Golden House, in which stood a
colossal effigy of himself 120 feet high, and in which the circuit of
the colonnade made three Roman miles. Whether he deliberately set fire
to the city in order to make room for this stupendous palace is open
to doubt. It was naturally believed at the time, and, in order to
divert suspicion from himself, he turned it upon those persons for
whom the Roman populace had at that moment the greatest contempt,
because, as the historian puts it, of their pestilent superstition and
of a profound suspicion that they harboured a "hatred of the human
race." These were the new sect of the Christians, and with burning
Christians did Nero proceed to light up his gardens on one famous
night, as a means of placating the populace whom he had offended, but
who for the most part loved him for his misplaced generosity in the
matter of "bread and sports." The tolerant attitude of the Romans
towards foreign religions will be discussed in its own place; but the
cruelty of a Nero in the year 64 can hardly be put down as properly a
religious persecution in any way typical of the Roman government.

The sensual vices of Nero are indescribable, and that word must
suffice. His extravagances, whether in lavish presents or in personal
expenditure, soon rendered him bankrupt. He had no means of p